What makes you think long term or permanent banned accounts aren't deleted? If I was a major MMO company and you broke the rules enough to ban you... I know I would lockout the login name and delete all data associated with the account. Why would I store the useless data indefinitely?

Basically this is asking for a chance to unban an account by throwing money at blizzard. No, just no.

It would mean to introduce a horridly complicated mechanism of checks and balances for the gain of a marginally small playerbase of banned players that
a) deserve to get unbanned and
b) actually care enough of their old account to get it back
Try and figure out how many players we're actually talking here about. And how much effort implementing and _maintaining_ this system would mean.
No, theses resources would benefit the game more elsewhere. Even if they would put these resources only back into the support-pool and thus prevent possibly wrong bans and/or improving the existing appeal system.

A system like that would only help those with enough money to throw at blizzard to get back again and again without any real fear of a ban. Because hey, even if they're banned, they can get it all back with enough money! This would throw the reasoning behind bans completely out of whack.

Thing is that it already works like in the real world. If you do something stupid you get punished and depending on what you did the punishment is different. In WoW you get suspended for 24h, 3 days or permanently. If you're banned permanently then you have done a lot of minor bad things or one big bad thing. Everyone knows the rules or everyone should know them and when you're banned then you're banned.

When someone uses Linux and uses Wine to emulate Windows and Blizzard's anti-hacking tool recognizes it as a forbidden background program then so be it.

What makes you think long term or permanent banned accounts aren't deleted?

I can log into my battle.net account right now and look at my frozen account, and all my characters on that account. I can even look up a character that is on that banned account in the armory, before armory ever existed. I can't see his gear, due to him being 'inactive for an extended period of time', however he certainly exists in the system.

That said, I don't see what bad PR there would be, since the only people getting old accounts back, are people already playing the game currently. There would be no 'old botters' or anything returning to the game.

---------- Post added 2013-05-01 at 08:54 AM ----------

A system like that would only help those with enough money to throw at blizzard to get back again and again without any real fear of a ban.

It would only be available once.

I do admit, a person COULD, in theory, go "I can do whatever I want and get banned, wait a year, spend more money, and get unbanned a single time" but that seems a bit.... That's a lot of work just to cheat one single time.

Check out the relevant forums. More than enough cases. 72h happens a lot unless you got some sor unmerged scum account, some shady gametime deals or you are directly connected to gold selling.

Originally Posted by Darsithis

MMOC works this very way. Bans start small and slowly add up. You can get permabanned but people have returned from that by demonstrating they're willing to follow the rules. Even our system allows for that without permabans...if you start behaving your infractions expire and you chance of being banned drops.

Infractions expire as well for Blizzard.

Originally Posted by chazus

I do admit, a person COULD, in theory, go "I can do whatever I want and get banned, wait a year, spend more money, and get unbanned a single time" but that seems a bit.... That's a lot of work just to cheat one single time.

People already buy new accounts and start cheating, harassing, hacking and what not. There is no reason to let them on top of that have their old accounts back unless you are supportive of that behavior.

People already buy new accounts and start cheating, harassing, hacking and what not. There is no reason to let them on top of that have their old accounts back unless you are supportive of that behavior.

I'm not sure I understand your logic. If they buy new accounts to do all that, they would be ineligible anyway.

Anyone doing any activity like that within the time period (say, a year), would not be allowed to do such. I don't know how to explain that any better.

I explain it a bit simpler for you. Keep one account clean for Blizzard, scum around on another, profit.

But.. again. That wouldn't work. Unless they were on separate battle.net accounts. Which would make the botting/whatever account banned, and ineligible for any use for a year. Even if you later merged them, you'd have to wait at least a year to get it unbanned.

Another stipulation would be that the two accounts would need to be on the same battle.net account for that same period of time.

If its of any interest chazus , have you thought about calling them directly blizzard do have this on their site , and if their terms of using wine have been relaxed you might have a leg to stand on .

Though our games are often playable on a lot of unsupported hardware and software configurations, these same setups will often block the system survey from completing its job. Some of the unsupported hardware and software that can issues with our system survey include:

Unlawfully obtained operating systems (pirated copies)
User-modified Mac operating systems running non-standard hardware
Unsupported operating systems such as Linux or AmigaDOS
If you are unable to connect to our game during a system survey period due to unsupported hardware or software, you will either need to temporarily play on a supported system or wait until the survey period is over to resume playing. System surveys typically last for about a week, but may run for a shorter or longer time.

With regards to the general Unbanning of a permanent ban , it seems self defeating to call it a Permanent ban if they allow buybacks of some sort perhaps a better concept would have been for them to state a minimum term say 3 years after all , here in the UK we call call a life sentance 25 years .

In the true exploit / breach of blizzard ToU it leaves as much of a bad taste in my mouth as people who can afford topflight lawyers to avoid jail sentences.

did you ever call blizzard on this , I once had to do so when i'd damage my phone and lost my cd key for wow and without an authenticator my account was locked
( this was before their automated system for this) while the wait was very long its worth a shot surely.

Plain and simple, should Blizzard implement some form of account amnesty for banned accounts?

Okay. Let me ask related questions. Who will police these individuals to ensure they toll the line during their amnesty period?

Will it be people? If so, who will pay them? Blizzards? Meaning us. Are you willing to let part of your subscriptions be used to pay for these GMs to monitor these previous offenders?

Will it be software? If so, who will pay for its development? Blizzards? Meaning us. Are you willing to let part of your subscriptions be used to pay for the development of software to monitor previous offenders rather than new contents?

My bad, I thought people were smarter than that. Wine is just a windows emulator for unix, which I was using at the time. Super malicious.

That's the thing though. If such a system were implemented... Those people are ALREADY playing the game. It wouldnt allow anyone new to return. Maybe I didn't make it clear.

People who had previously been banned, would need to have an active, paid separate account for a period of time (6-12 months? 24?) to even be considered. They are already playing the game currently, and have been. This is not something to let banned players 'back into the game'

But it sets the consequences for the banned person. Banned person can play again, but he/she will never get their items/characters/gold/everything back. That is the consequences. Your idea ruins the consequences forever.

I do admit, a person COULD, in theory, go "I can do whatever I want and get banned, wait a year, spend more money, and get unbanned a single time" but that seems a bit.... That's a lot of work just to cheat one single time.

But it's not a single time -- and it may not necessarily be cheating that got them banned.

It's ridiculous to assume that a person is instantly banned the first time they do something wrong. Instead, it usually happens after several people have reported them for doing it several times. (Unless it's something really major, and a GM catches you.)

So instead of it being "a lot of work just to cheat one single time", it would be more accurate to say, "you can climb your way up the penalty volcano with peace of mind, knowing that if you ever reach the top, you can buy your 'freedom'".

I'm really surprised at the amount of people who don't agree with this idea.

MMOC works this very way. Bans start small and slowly add up. You can get permabanned but people have returned from that by demonstrating they're willing to follow the rules. Even our system allows for that without permabans...if you start behaving your infractions expire and you chance of being banned drops.

I'd like to see something like this added into the system. I'd like to see people who have made mistakes, who have been children or immature, learn from those and become good members of the community. There is no reason to throw anyone away for good.

There is a difference here. MMOC isn't a game, much less a competitive game, nor it involves money.

Good idea, but I would change stuff.
You really shouldn't have to buy a new game and play that for so long.
It's quite lame that someone's account, that he played on for 5 years, can get banned because he used a bot for one week.

Maybe give people a chance to unban their accounts after at least 6 months by kindly asking Customer Service?

Originally Posted by Tauror

There is a difference here. MMOC isn't a game, much less a competitive game, nor it involves money.

So? Even murder won't get you locked up for the rest of your life in most cases.

I'm really surprised at the amount of people who don't agree with this idea.

MMOC works this very way. Bans start small and slowly add up. You can get permabanned but people have returned from that by demonstrating they're willing to follow the rules. Even our system allows for that without permabans...if you start behaving your infractions expire and you chance of being banned drops.

I'd like to see something like this added into the system. I'd like to see people who have made mistakes, who have been children or immature, learn from those and become good members of the community. There is no reason to throw anyone away for good.

MMOC is a public forum that offers free accounts to its users, though. Aside from the fact that creating a new account is literally not even a hurdle to someone who is banned, MMOC does have permanent bans too, am I right? It makes sense to have a points system, because the opposite - having permanent bans - just encourages ban evasion. And while I understand ban evasion is against the rules, having been involved in a few forums in my life, I understand that it's almost impossible to enforce it 100%; you basically wait for someone to slip up.

Furthermore, people who are banned from MMOC are banned almost exclusively for breaking social rules: being abusive to other users, trolling, spamming, things of that nature. And while WoW bans for those things too, those are almost never the permanent bans. The permanent bans are more for things like cheating, or abusing a bug, or botting - things that damage the game as a whole. These are things that separate a game like WoW and a forum like MMO-Champion.

While it is true that people who make minor mistakes - like, as you said, being children, or immature - deserve a second chance, those people are probably a very very very tiny minority of those who are permanently banned from WoW - and those that are have had far more than one chance at redemption. The overwhelming majority of those permanently banned are people who damage the game for other paying customers. Those individuals deserve no second chance.